5 Secrets to Finding Happiness

“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.”

That’s the secret to happiness. More specifically, your right actions will lead to increased levels of happiness. What are the right actions? The first one is gratitude. You cannot simultaneously hold emotions such as fear, loathing, jealousy, and hatred while also being grateful. If you are feeling stressed out, anxious, or generally bummed out, the fastest way back to happiness is a deep focus on gratitude. This can be accomplished with 10 to 15 minutes of focused meditation. The focus of the meditation being, “What three things are you truly grateful for?”

But wait, deep thoughts of gratitude are not action, right? And the secret to happiness comes from your own actions, so it’s not enough to think thoughts of gratitude. Instead, actions must be taken. In this case, it is the act of expressing your appreciation to the people for whom you are most grateful. In fact, it’s more important to tell someone how much you appreciate them than to tell them you love them. That’s because love means different things to different people, but appreciation is universal. The act of expressing gratitude to those you love will immediately affect your level of happiness.